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| Mmmkay, that's the THIRD G-rated Christmas special so far with an ad for the Sherlock Holmes movie. SO. NOT. COOL. When I put on a show for my child that is G rated, I expect the ads to be G rated, and not full of sex and violence. And the networks wonder why we hardly watch anymore...sheesh. eta Actually, all three are on ABC or ABC Family. I guess I know to whom I should complain... | ||||||
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Blatherings
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December 12th, 2009
November 16th, 2009
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| I just watched all three parts of the CSI Vegas/Miami/NY crossover and the suckage was so great that I think I sustained permanent brain damage. ( spoilers behind cut ) | ||||||
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November 6th, 2009
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| So lame...I can't remember the last episode of CSI that didn't end up with all the cases connected. That used to be an occasional and interesting twist, and now it's every friggin' episode. And now I have to record the other two CSI shows, which I never watch, if I want to know what the hell is going on in regular Vegas CSI later in the week because of a weeklong crossover. Gah. At least it's still somewhat decent to knit to. But if that dick from the Miami one takes off his glasses dramatically, I'm going to want to punch him in the face. | ||||||
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September 13th, 2009
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| Just watched the new They Might Be Giants Here Comes Science DVD today with Peo, and she LOVED it. We did too, although Peo's kind of bummed that the John and John puppets aren't there. They’re animated this time. The first song, "Science is Real", is pretty much a hardcore slam against the anti-science movements like "intelligent design" and that sort of crap. There's a great line about how it's fun to imagine things like angels, unicorns, and elves but when you want knowledge you have to look at the facts. Awesome. It will give Peo good ammo to fight off religious incursions she'll inevitably face as she gets older. It's also really funny how they revisit the sun stuff, first by doing mass of incandescent gas but then followed by miasma of plasma. It skews for older kids more than ABCs and 123s, but in our household, it's never too soon to learn about DNA. And yes, Peo shouted out that it was DNA before they said what it was. We were very proud! | ||||||
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September 11th, 2009
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| I am behind on several topics. Here is a quick-as-possible update: 1) On the Tidy-vs-TV battle, we won, but needed reinforcements in the form of grandparental units. They were under strict instructions not to actually pick stuff up for Peo (and oh, did she try to ply them every way possible!) but were available to keep her company and help count items. The room got clean. Unfortunately, one of the motivators was to be able to go to my cake meeting that night...and I screwed up because the meeting was the following week. Oops. But I admitted my error and we made good by Peo by going out for Chinese food instead, where she happily chattered the words/phrases she knows in Mandarin. 2) Coolest/funniest/deepest thing Peo has said recently: she wants desperately to visit Kai-Lan and has been convinced that she has to go to CartoonLand to do so, and declared to Corran that if she goes to CartoonLand and meets Kai-Lan and Kai-Lan draws a picture of her, then it will be a picture of Reality. 3) With tons and tons of the right stretching in advance, I can now take short, stompy, unassisted steps. As in, not safe to be carrying a pot of boiling water or anything, but could probably escape a fire in the house. And the podiatrist told me to get a cane to try to get off the crutches. So I did (for $25 all they had were patterned ones and I didn't feel like spending extra for wood so I have an old-lady pattern but the least old-ladyish they had), and I've been using it when the ankle is nice and warmed up from stretching. However, I have to be careful to not leave myself abandoned with crutches out of reach, because after about 10 minutes of not-stretching, the whole thing locks up again and the cane is insufficient. Podiatrist says it's acute tendinitis and not the bones/hardware/surgery. So I've got more appointments with physical therapy now, and they can now do other stuff since they know it's not hardware in the way, so we'll see how it goes. 4) Taught the two cake classes last week. The Mensa one ended up with only two adults and two kids...and the kids were periodically unsupervised and made a mess of my gel colours. They grabbed them and were jamming my brushes into them before I even noticed (one of the brushes is still soaking to get the colour out from under the metal bit, grrr), since I was trying to teach the adults. Plus, I couldn't easily cross the room to get them back. So I asked very seriously for them to go easy and not mix the colours, but they did. Gahhhhh. The adults were very pleasant and the organizer very gracious and all of that, but I think I have a new rule that under no circumstances will I ever teach a class again that uses MY equipment unless there's a nobody-under-18 rule. Unfair, because I know of kids in their early teens who are highly responsible and quite talented cake decorators, but that's the last time I'm risking my stuff on someone else's kids. Plus I'm not sure how valuable my time was teaching two adults who thanked me but admitted they'd probably never try any of it themselves. I'd only do a class like that again if it had pre-enrollment, as opposed to this, which was part of a convention with a show-up-if-you-wanna style. Four other women came in near the end but really, I'm not sure how much they could have learned doing that. The cake club class went much better and I've received lovely positive feedback, so I'd happily do that again any time they want me. But no more casual volunteering for non-cakies, I think. 5) Corran's parents were here and are now on their way home (may have landed by now, not sure, US to Sydney flights are scary-long), and were very nice Cinderellas for us the whole time, helping cut into the backlog of cleaning that had piled up since my surgery. On the day they arrived, Peo suggested they go back home immediately, but then of course when they left she was upset. Today she roleplayed it out with toys, which seemed to help. 6) Been watching the Canadian show "Intelligence" on DVD via the library and it's very interesting...but I wish Matt Frewer would stop muttering all the damned time, especially since there's no closed captioning or subtitles. Grrrr. All the US DVDs I get have at least the closed captions...which may even be a requirement these days? Pain in the ass how many UK/Canadian ones don't. I have a hearing problem and men's voices turn to mud when there's low-note background music, which this show has in spades. So I have to listen to it LOUD or I miss half of what's being said, and then inevitably the next scene has loud music so it's a huge noise. Pain in the ass. We also finally got Watchmen from the library queue and Frewer was in that too, as was another guy from Intelligence. And two weeks ago I ended up seeing Felicia Day in a ridiculous amount of things all within a few days...rewatched Dr. Horrible, there was the video about dating the avatar, and there was an episode of Monk (which I'm also doing by library DVD) as well. And something else, but I forget. Am I being celebrity-stalked through my TV or am I just a pattern-finding ape? Hmmmm... Anyway, off to finish Intelligence so it can go back to the library today before it's overdue, and to work on the last bits of the Kai-Lan dolls (one for Peo, one for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nightxade's daughter) and then finish up the Biscuit Brothers stuff that has been taking for-bloody-ever. | ||||||
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August 27th, 2009
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| OMG, it's just the week for all things Dr. Horrible, including cakes: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/0 | ||||||
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| We watched Fellowship of the Ring again last night. But we've been watching too much children's programming, and our brains have been ruined. This is a quick mock-up of our conversation from one point in the movie... ( nightxade in particular will appreciate this, I hope)( Read more... ) | ||||||
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July 8th, 2009
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| A really cool episode of Nova I've mentioned before is about to rerun, at least on our local PBS: Nova: Kings of Camouflage Tue, Jul 21, 07:00 PM to 08:00 PM (60 mins) Cuttlefish are able to change their skin color and even their shape to blend into virtually any background. (TV-G, CC, Stereo, Rerun) Highly recommended, and obviously check your local listings to confirm. | ||||||
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June 11th, 2009
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| One more quick update and then back to the couch for me...Corran and I have really been enjoying a show on Discovery called "Time Warp". It's not quite so nerdy-sciency as Mythbusters, but there is some cool science that can be seen when the guys on this show use ultra-high-speed cameras to slow down all kinds of stuff to the point where you can see reactions happening. For instance, their stuff with bubbles (which we showed to Peo) showed that when you pop a bubble, it pops from the pop point out and around to the other side, not all at once. It's very, very, very cool. We're even saving an episode with some cool shots in case Corran's parents make it out here soon, because there were some shots on that one that blew our minds. There is a lot with explosions, guns, and people doing other dangerous things, so it's not necessarily the most child-safe TV, depending on the child. Like I said, we let Peo watch about the bubbles, but she doesn't need any encouragement to leap off of park railings or set fire to things, y'know? It airs on Wednesdays next to Mythbusters (which is how we found it, always seeing the end tacked on to our Mythbusters recordings), plus they seem to air tons of them on weekends so it's easy to grab a bunch to watch. eta the one we're saving is entitled "Sharpshooter". Catch that one if you can. Holy friggin' crap on the lollipop thing. Had to watch that over and over again. My mind remains blown. | ||||||
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May 27th, 2009
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| Since we have no access to recorded tv right now, we zipped through the last eps of the library copy of season 2 of Torchwood, which catches us up with Doctor Who stuff that has aired over here (corran says there have been some mini episodes in the UK that haven't aired here yet, please do not post spoilers about them). And our opinion of Torchwood has generally been... ( torchwood seasons one and two spoilers behind the cut ) | ||||||
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May 7th, 2009
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| Been meaning to mention this since last weekend... I took Peo to Pioneer Farms here in Austin, which is where the Biscuit Brothers is filmed (and as far as Peo is concerned, is an actual, operating, Magical Musical Farm). There was a Biscuit Brothers concert along with other May Day celebrations. You know that the Biscuit Brothers' show - which teaches kids about music, everything from musical terms to types of instruments to the science of sound - is accomplishing its educational goals when we were on the other side of the farm from the stage and, when some low notes came over the hill, Peo said, "I hear a bass!" By which she means the double bass. And she was right. Awesome. :) PS I linked to the About page for the Biscuit Brothers because the main page has automatic music. | ||||||
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February 18th, 2009
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| Errryyymmm... So everyone is always on about "Curb Your Enthusiasm," like it's the best thing ever ever ever, so I finally got around to getting the DVD from the library to watch while I work on cake figures. I've watched the first three or four episodes. Um...when does this get funny? Because so far it's a show about assholes being assholes getting themselves into asinine situations, with Larry being a significantly assier asshole than the rest of the assholes, but really, the whole thing is a proctology convention. Does it get better soon or should I just go ahead and put in my Kids in the Hall DVDs instead? Because those are ACTUALLY funny. | ||||||
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October 10th, 2008
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| Cake's done, no major catastrophes, yay! In fact, I'm reasonably happy with it, despite the cast sugar being too amber. I did take piccies already but...nah, it'd be wrong to let you all see them before the birthday girl gets to see the cake. Okay, quit'cher whinin', here's one more teaser pic: ( Read more... ) Still need to do a bunch more things before bed, but I'm not going to bother cleaning up the disaster in the kitchen. The weather should be good so everyone will be in the backyard, and if someone goes in to use the washroom and sees the cake decorating stuff everywhere, well, they'll just have an inkling of how hard I worked. I can live with that. Oh, and once again, I doubt I could ever do this professionally on a regular basis because PIPING HUUUURRRRTS! Ow ow ow. Arm about to fall off. Ow. Pretty flowers/leaves=yay, but arm sorrrrrrrrrre... eta: I think my vanilla cakes are too soft for construction. Junior Gorg sank into the cake when I placed him. I had to put dowels under him, a lump of fondant where the cake covering had torn away under his weight, and he still wanted to tip/tear through the cake so I stuffed the area under his feet with jelly beans. I never knew you could use jelly bellies as support structure...oi... | ||||||
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October 4th, 2008
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| So everyone can see why I'm busy lately (I will get around to replying to comments soon, I swear)...more teasers on the progress of Peo's cake: ( pics behind cut ) Obviously the excess powdered sugar will be cleaned off as part of painting. The figures are almost done, one more session should do it (presuming I don't drop any more, since I spent an afternoon fixing a dropped Gobo, argh), then I can paint them and should have them done in time to actually bake, ice, and cover the cakes at the end of this week and actually put the figures on it. I also still need to make some other non-character pieces, but those should go fast and easily. | ||||||
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August 27th, 2008
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| Peo was at a friend's house yesterday evening and they had Beauty and the Beast on. Peo was enthralled and refused to leave until I promised her that she could see it at our house. She's never seen it before. She hasn't seen any of the big Disney flicks, other than the opening to Lion King that I showed her about a year ago and she wasn't very interested. Oh, and she did watch Mary Poppins about a year ago, loved the songs, was bored by the dialogue. Oh yeah, and she saw Cars at foshka's house. Anyway, I spent most of last evening trying to find the damned tape (yes, tape), and of course it was in a box under a huge stack in the back of a closet that had other boxes in front of it. So it was too late to watch last night, but Peo asked today (I was kind of hoping she'd forget...nice try), so I let her watch it, and I sat with her, not knitting or anything, so I could constantly gauge her reaction. She was very concerned at the violent bits, which I anticipated, since she hasn't been allowed to watch violent stuff before (all of her friends in Vegas seemed to have seen Shrek, but we haven't let Peo watch it because it's far too violent for little kids...when she's older, sure, and we've read the book from the library, which is more about being smelly and yucky than violent). She's seen implied violence in the Wallace and Gromit movies, and some amount of slapstick in Chicken Run, the Fraggles, and the Muppet Show, but not actual slug-out, constant battery fight scenes. Most implied violence she's seen has involved puppets chasing each other around, or Miss Piggy and man, Peo emulates Miss Piggy's hitting FAR TOO WELL. Back to the point: Beauty and the Beast was the first thing she's seen with stronger violence. She was spooked a bit by the wolves, wasn't particularly happy with the castle siege and defense, and the last fight-out between Gaston and the Beast left her with lots of hard questions. And did I take the modern approach of telling her the hard and gruesome details of things like being eaten by wolves or falling to one's death? FUCK NO! I lied and lied and lied! Wish I didn't have to, but hey, I wasn't going to have her freaking out for weeks about this stuff. I told her the wolves were trying to bite, and left it at that. When one did bite the Beast, it confirmed it. Yay. I told her that the mean people attacked the castle and that wasn't playing very nice, so the furniture had to defend it, but that nobody was really hurt because it was just silly stuff like the candle burning the man's bum. Yay. And for the end, I told her that Gaston was very mean and that he hurt the Beast, but then when he fell, he fell far, far away to another place where he can live by himself until he learns to play nicely and not hurt anybody anymore. She wanted to know where he lived, so I said he fell down into a house at the bottom of the castle. As for the overall concept of the film, I summed it up for her as this: there was a Prince who wasn't nice and didn't play nicely with other people, so a witch turned him into a Beast until he learned to be nice. When he learned to play nicely with Belle in the snow and do good sharing with her, she became his friend and the magic turned him back into a man. Then Belle and the Prince could get married and play nicely and do kissing and snuggling. Obviously, there's a lot more to the story than that, like the emphasis this version puts on Belle being a smart girl while the swooning blondes just drool over Gaston, or loyalty to one's family and friends, or giving up someone you love when it's better for them, or all of that good stuff, but that's all way above Peo's head. So too are the darker elements, like how Stocklholm Syndrome isn't particularly romantic when you view the story that way. And it's funny...we've endured some shock on the part of other parents when we say we've allowed her to see Chicken Run, because of course adults recognize that it's a parody of The Great Escape, and that brings to mind war and Nazis and concentration camps, which are utterly horrible things that one would not want to discuss with a little kid. But all of that is adult perception. Look at Chicken Run through the eyes of a little kid who has no context for the implications, and it is what it is: a story about some chickens who want to be free of their pen and go to comical lengths to achieve that. The one death is offscreen, totally implied, and completely contextual. I guarantee you that Peo doesn't get that it even happened. Peo doesn't think it's murder to be made into a pie, because as far as she knows eating chicken is no different than eating an egg; if the chicken is still around, alive and happy, if you eat the egg, surely it is if you eat some chicken too, right? But Gaston singing, "KILL THE BEAST!", shooting him with an arrow, clubbing him, and stabbing him in the back leaves little room for fudging. It's very interesting how some things are societally deemed as appropriate for children and others are not, and most people fall in line without really examining the elements closely. I think I liked it better when Peo's viewing habits were uncomplicated, just singing people in funny costumes who went on and on and on and ON AND ON AND ON AND ON about dancing dinosaurs or musical farms or whatever. Bring on the Wiggles and Biscuit Brothers...lying about death is exhausting. | ||||||
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May 6th, 2008
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| 1) Kids say the darndest things part 1: the other day Corran was reading to Peo and reindeer were mentioned, so she said they need an umbrella. 2) Kids say the darndest things part 2: today Corran and I were discussing financial matters related to that friendlocked issue (matters largely outside of our control due to the current economic climate) and Peo started acting out to get attention. When we asked her what was wrong, she said, "Mummy and Daddy need more money." Gahhh, that didn't make us feel bad, MUCH. 3) nightxade sent Peo a very early birthday gift of a Spirograph! How awesome is that?! Peo can sort of control the wheels against the gears a bit, but more importantly, she just thinks it's awesome to draw through a hole in plastic. :) I LOVED my Spirograph as a kid. I actually spent hours and hours figuring out how many rotations a given setting required to return to the beginning, how different holes made different loops, etc.Peo asked, "Who gave this to me?" and we told her Ivy did, to which she said, "I say thank you to her!" :) 4) Wanna know how horrible parents we are? We've let Peo watch The Daily Show and Colbert Report since she was born. A few weeks ago, TDS had a bit about a congressional committee meeting in Second Life, and the Colbert after it featured a Democralypse animation involving bad things happening to a donkey. If we asked her right now - and boy, we're not, because we're trying to get her to forget - Peo would still ask confused questions about the dolphin with the boobies, the caterpillar who ate the lady, and then give us the big-sad-eye look as she asks, "What happened to the donkey? He fell in half and got all burned up!" Oiiiiiiiiii. 30 years from now she'll be describing these images from the depths of her psyche to some shrink and neither of them will know what it all means... So we stopped letting her watch those shows. Instead, we let her watch Food Network Challenge cake competitions with us. She spends the entire show running around saying, "Move your cake to the judging taaaaaable!" We are so warping her. Poor kid. But seriously...it's that or I'm gonna strangle a Fraggle. My kid does an eerily good Mokie voice... | ||||||
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January 6th, 2008
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| 1) Peo now can either spell and/or recognize if you spell out the following words: Peo, dog, cat, ant, bus, milk, and Costco (yay for early branding!). 2) One of the first things Peo does each morning is confirm what day it is. She almost always gets it right, long after the advent calendar incentive has been gone. She even gets that it's 2008. 3) Peo misses the Christmas tree and has started demanding that it be Christmas season again so it can come back out of its box. I had to make her a Duplo tree today. 4) In her bath tonight, she put her washcloth on her head Python Gumby style. One corner near her eye dripped, and she kept trying to catch the drips, but because it was so close to her eye the depth perception was off and she kept snatching in mid-air several inches away. Then she started banging a plastic half-cup measure on her head and singing, again, a la Python Gumby. 5) Ivy ( nightxade's daughter) sent Peo a Dragon from the Russ Shining Stars line (I'd give you a link to the pic but the stupid website is flash-based so I can't do a specific link). As she took it out of the box, it looked at first like a blue cow (and looking at the Cow from the same line, we can see why, since it's the same base pattern). But then we saw the wings and said, "Oh, it's a Dragon!" And Peo firmly declared, "No, DragonCow!"DragonCow is suddenly Peo's obsessive toy of choice. It goes to bed with her. It comes downstairs with her. It rides in the car with her. It gets hugged, kissed, and attended to with great detail. Her only complaint is that she wants to move the firmly embedded metal star from its foot to its tummy, no doubt because of her recent love of Seuss Sneetches. I've convinced her that it stays on the foot, but she reminds me several times a day that it should be on the tummy. The only toy she's ever loved so much so fast was the Ernie puppet! Oh, and on Christmas day, when Peo saw all of the presents under the tree, she declared that they were all from Ivy. All packages, in Peo's mind, either come from or go to Ivy. Ivy=Santa/Post. 6) On the Vol. 2 Old School Sesame Street, there's a point where the little boy asks Grover to count a single penny in his hand. Peo finds this underwhelming, and ALWAYS shouts to the TV at that scene, "Count to 12!" 7) In a recent Parents magazine, a supposedly helpful tip from another parent was to help teach FOUR YEAR OLDS to recognize letters by putting toys in bins with the first letter of the toy on it, ie so you put a robot in the R bin to teach R is for Robot. Let me repeat...FOUR YEAR OLDS. I told this to Corran and he said that his tip to teach FOUR YEAR OLDS to recognize letters was to start reading to them when they're five days old, whoops, too late if your kid is already FOUR YEARS OLD AND DOESN'T RECOGNIZE ANY LETTERS! I mean, I get that Peo's smart and all, but seriously...are there normal-intelligence, not-delayed-in-any-way four year olds out there that can't recognize letters? Because if that's actually normal, we're so hosed for public schooling! 8) Same genius magazine had on one page tips on getting rid of too many toys from the house after the Christmas onslaught. They talk about sorting the toys into safe/usable and junk piles, and donating the first and chucking the second. All I could think was, "Hey...sure, donating the safe/usable stuff is cool, but you could also resell it if you need cash, or investigate your local Freecycle, and don't throw out broken/old stuff before seeing if someone on Freecycle or toy refurbishers want it first." After all, I see pretty bad-condition vintage Fisher Price Little People go on ebay regularly to the folks who repaint them as pop icons/characters and then sell them as art. Seriously folks...you'd be amazed at how something you think is junk could be used by someone else. Before chucking old toys, look into your local Freecycle or craft community to see if anyone wants them. Waste not, want not! 9) Even better...same magazine on the very next page has its "green" shopping list, but most of the products were of dubious greenness at best (ie a broom that's supposedly made of recycled materials, but it doesn't specify how much of it is recycled, and if you go buy a new broom you don't need just because it's got recycled bits in it, that's more wasteful and harmful than if you clean/repair the broom you've already got and keep using it for longer). And I'm getting really damned sick of this trend. Greenness has become trendy and everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, which would be cool if not for the fact that a significant proportion of products marketed as "green" aren't, or are so minimally green when a much greener alternative would suffice. People who care about being green still need to research products properly. Anything else is mindless tokenism. 10) Speaking of being green and wrapping back around to Peo's insanity, she makes me sing the first verse of "It's Not Easy Being Green" almost every night, but she doesn't quite get it, because then she usually asks for "It's Not Easy Being Purple" or my favourite unrealistic variant, "It's Not Easy Being White." Who's been letting my baby watch Fox Spews?! :D 11) I brought out my old Yamaha electronic piano thingy the other day for Peo to play with, since she's become obsessed with pianos. She played so happily for a good long time, then consented to me putting it away. Then she demanded I produce a guitar. Well, I didn't have one, so in about five minutes SUPERCRAFTYMUM made her one out of a tissue box, rubber bands, a paper towel roll, and some tape. Piccies to come another day. Oh, and DragonCow likes to play the piano too. That's all the updates I can think of for now...I'm exhausted and not spellchecking or reading for typos... | ||||||
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December 29th, 2007
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| I didn't get around to making a Christmas summary post, mostly because I was feeling wiped out most of the day (I've been lightly ill and sleeping like crap for about a month now, so I've spent a lot of Corran's break getting in extra nap time instead of doing computer stuff). So the summary now...Peo mostly had a lot of fun. We had decided in advance that if she wanted to play with gifts as she opened them, we wouldn't rush her through opening, even if it pushed the gifts into another day. But she decided the opposite, that opening was awesome, and opened everything pretty quickly. When she was peeling off the paper (yes, I was bad-Eco-girl and let her rip paper...it's a toddler-only thing and the rest of her life she'll have gift bags...mind you, a lot of the paper was reused multiple times on past Christmases), she would continually mutter to herself, "What it be?" as in, "What can it be?" Ultra-cute! I made a lot of movies and took a lot of photos (filled the 2G card and about half of the 1G card), so that will be posted eventually, but I'm in a backlog, as usual. The big hit gift on that first day was the vintage Fisher Price Little People barn and some related pieces I packed inside. Putting things in and out of the barn and opening and closing the doors is, apparently, awesome. Since then, the Target bargain bin miniature plastic food (with NO brand names, YAY!) and matching oven mitts, potholders, and chef's hat (and the apron given to us by the lady two doors down...she had no idea I had the matching pieces already but didn't have the apron!) have been a huge hit. Peo demands constantly that we cook with her. I've got piccies of that too, lots of cuteness. And who's up for some yummy rice, "cola", macaroni and cheese, green beans, Italian chicken, all fried up and then mixed with plastic bananas, apples, with tomato basil soup poured on top? Yummy! (Reminds me of a Toronto-based game show when I was a kid called Just Like Mom...the last round involved kids using whatever ingredients they wanted from a huge variety to make something the mothers had to eat and then guess, based on the chosen ingredients, which was made by their kid...there were a lot of chocolate-chip, whipped cream, and ketchup mixes...) The other big hit that has arisen is the Parents Magnet School, which is a rare treat in that it is a set of magnetic letters safe for kids younger than 3. Most of the alphabet magnets are marked 3+ because the magnets aren't very securely in place, posing a serious choking hazard. And while Peo is generally good about not mouthing things, she's still a little kid and might do so. But as a two-year-old who knows her alphabet, spells, etc., waiting until she's three is silly. So the Parents set is perfect for Peo. The magnets are deeply and firmly embedded...it looks to me like they'd have to be cut out with some serious tools. They hold well (we gave her a small magnetic white board) and are nice and chunky for good gripping. Plus the set came with sturdy cards (not rock-hard...if stepped on enough they will eventually crease, but they're not flimsy, rippable paper) with a slot for a magnet letter in place of the first letter of each word. Peo loves to put the letters in place and then say what the other remaining letters of the word are (which is why she now knows D O G is dog), and with Corran this morning she would even then find those other letters and spell out the word on the white board. In the short time with this toy, she's gone from sort of getting that letters make up her name and that M starts lots of words to clearly comprehending letters as building blocks for words. She also got a vintage FPLP fire station and truck (turning the handle to make the door go up and the bell ding is the best part right now), a set of Duplos (which is fun but she's still learning to deal with them, so she gets frustrated and asks for help...we predict within a week or two though she'll be fine), some books that she's already in love with, Volume 2 of the Sesame Street Old School (but after a single viewing she keeps asking for the previous volume...she goes through phases of being a neophile and a neophobe, this week it's the latter, next week she'll probably beg for new stuff), a pair of overalls with a bunch of patches I sewed on, some more rubber duckies, some chocolate, some more vintage large FPLP for the bath, and a set of Melissa and Doug rubber stamps and an inkpad. She got one gift on Christmas Eve...a set of Sesame Street ornaments for the tree. Corran got some book, a knitted Dalek I made him (from the EXTERMIKNIT! pattern I found on Ravelry...and yes I taught Peo to say "EXTERMINATE" which is really wrong and really adorable), the complete Blackadder DVD set (that's what I mentioned previously that I think doesn't really affect the WGA strikers, since it's old stuff and from another country), a t-shirt that Peo painted at a playdate, a mug Peo painted at the centre I take her to regularly, and a cropped version of this pic of Peo holding giant d20s in 8x10 format with a big matted frame around which I glued a bunch of RPG dice...and I can't remember what else. I got the Twin Peaks DVD gold set (wheeee!), two knitting books, Bender's Big Score DVD (Corran got it on Peo's behalf as a gift to both of us)...erm...can't remember what else, I'm exhausted... Later in the day, despite a nap, Peo was pretty trigger-teary because of the excitement of it all. We all ended up going to bed early. For food, we did a non-trad dinner. Corran worked in the morning to prepare a slow-cooker pot roast, which turned out okay, but could use some tweaking. The breakfast we had was nice but could also use some tweaking...I made most of it the night before so all it needed as a pop in the oven on Christmas morning. It was the Sausage Mushroom Breakfast Strata from Joy of Cooking. There's probably more to say but I'm fading fast and need to get to bed (not even going to proofread this post). Will post pics and video eventually. | ||||||
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December 22nd, 2007
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| More info on Stewart/Colbert returning, although also raises lots of important questions: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/con Corran and I figure there's at least a half dozen areas of academic study where this odd situation could lend itself to a good thesis. I emailled someone at WGA to ask if they are going to call for a boycott on the shows. Since at the moment, judging by that article, it's entirely possible that the shows will act as a platform of support for the strike, a boycott may not be necessary. It really depends on what they're forced to do (and I'm still not sure how much of this is the network forcing them to return or how much of it is their will). If there is a boycott, Corran and I won't watch. I hope there isn't, because I miss the shows and I want to see what they do with the limited resources. I really really hope they use it as a platform of support...that way I can watch and it'll be awesome for the cause. If I hear back from the WGA, I'll let you all know. | ||||||
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December 8th, 2007
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| Can someone please help us with non-spoiler Heroes info? We've watched the Dec 3 episode, which from what we've heard, is the last for a bit. I'm also aware that the strike has put Heroes: Origins on hold. But does anyone know when/if Heroes is coming back, or if it's just entirely on hold until the strike is resolved one way or another? Not looking for conjecture, but actual industry announcements. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE NO SPOILERS! We just want to know if anyone out there knows if/when it's supposed to return. I've skimmed some info but if I dig deeper I'll see spoilers. Don't even allude to them, please. | ||||||
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Blatherings
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